Without knowing the specifics of bookstable, you have a typo here: {{BCom}, and each row must end with \\ (missing in your "Number of courses ..." row). And the total of columns combined in multicolumns should equal your total number of columns of your table, so just put a & at the beginning of the row to produce an empty first colum.
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ChristofMar 1 '14 at 13:27

Thanks very much. Works perfectly, and thanks for the thorough explanation. Just another quick question - the alignment of the heading of the table looks a bit silly -- my image. What are the options to make it look more aesthetically pleasing? Would it be possible to make the heading fit on one line?
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ChrisMar 1 '14 at 14:22

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@Chris I edited. Changes are in margin and the width of columns. This is the best possible with such long headers. :0
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Harish KumarMar 1 '14 at 14:49

@Chris As a side note, saying thanks here is best communicated by upvoting ( all the good answers) and accepting (the more useful answer). You may want to refer to How do you accept an answer? in case of doubts :)
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Harish KumarMar 1 '14 at 22:37

hi @Harish Kumar, I have upvoted your answer and one other :). Just another quick question - how do I fill an empty cell in a table with a "-". I tried "\-" but the cell remains blank.
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ChrisMar 2 '14 at 7:03

In addition to using the booktabs package (to get good-looking, i.e., well-spaced, horizontal lines), I would also recommend you use the tabularx package to simplify the job of getting four equal-width columns.

Addendum: Incidentally, the look of the table you show in your posting can not be achieved when using the commands of the booktabs package. If you really need all those vertical and horizontal lines, you shouldn't use the command \toprule, \bottomrule, \midrule and \cmidrule. Instead, just use the basic-LaTeX \hline instruction. (You can, of course, still make use of the tabularx package to simplify the creation of equal-width columns for columns 2 to 5 of the table.)

These modifications will will lead to the table shown below. I hope you will agree that the "booktabs look" -- no vertical lines, fewer horizontal lines overall, and well-spaced rules -- is much preferable to what one might call the "spreadsheet look".

Hi - yes I do agree the booktabs look is far better. The image I had in my OP is from Word, and I was in a rush to post because I had to go off somewhere. The vertical lines were there because they come standard with the Word "table" tool.
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ChrisMar 1 '14 at 15:10